Bellator’s Rebney Talks Second Season and Major TV Deal

An unfortunate fact of media life: people doing their job right
aren’t nearly as interesting as people screwing it up.

Earlier in the year, while terminal companies like Affliction and
EliteXC were busy making the kinds of business decisions that put
them in the bread line, the Bellator Fighting Championships was
quietly issuing a slick, no-frills product that developed a
following based on clever viral marketing and a
no-flow-chart-necessary tournament format. Spanish-language fans
were recruited on ESPN Deportes; English-language viewers, perhaps
a little slighted, followed clips on YouTube.

No giant dragons, no pro wrestlers commentating, and nothing much
to complain about. Simple works.

Recently, some of that goodwill was deflated when word circulated
that Bellator’s second “season” would be delayed from the fall
until early 2010. Bellator co-founder and CEO Bjorn Rebney believes
he has a very good reason for the stutter -- and it involves 150
million households.

Sherdog.com: You’ve confirmed the new season
of Bellator will begin the first quarter of 2010. Delays are
usually never a good sign. Why the pause?

Rebney: It really boils down to spending the necessary time
to create the kind of TV alliance that would give us the largest
possible distribution platform. There are a lot of pieces to the
equation to keep the company working the right way, to make the
cash flow positive, to ensure we don’t follow in the footsteps of
the Elites and the IFLS and the Bodogs and Afflictions and
others.

That’s what we’ve done. [The TV deal] is finished, it’s done. We’ll
be announcing it very, very shortly -- in all likelihood, within
the next 12 days. We have a situation set up now where we’ll be
able to give over 150 million people each week the opportunity to
tune in and watch what we’re doing, and that’s a very exciting
thing.

Sherdog.com: Do you still plan on catering to
the Spanish-speaking market?

Rebney: We are not turning our backs on the Hispanic market
of MMA fans who supported us in the first season. You will be able
to watch the show in both Spanish and English language next
season.

Sherdog.com: One thing that fans were miserly
about was the fact that the telecasts would usually be on a
tape-delay. Are you addressing this?

Rebney: You’ll be able to watch Bellator season two live.
There were a lot of issues at play that were reasons for the delay
last season, but we’re not constrained by that moving forward.

Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com

Lombard wants to keep
busy.

Sherdog.com: A consequence of
the TV deal is the idea that your champions will be inactive until
2010. Hector
Lombard, for one, has been quoted as saying he wants to get two
fights before the end of the year. Will he?

Rebney: We’ve been working diligently to secure right kind
of match-ups for our champions: Hector, Eddie
Alvarez, Lyman Good,
and Joe
Soto. They’ll be fighting in the interim. They won’t be waiting
until we crown a number-one challenger in the season’s tournaments.
They’ll fight either in strategic alliances we have with other
promotions, or they’ll be fighting at the beginning of the season
in feature bouts, perhaps outside of their weight divisions.

Hector is one of those guys who desperately wants to fight all the
time. We’ve been working to find the right kind of situation for
him to fight before the season even begins. There’s a very high
likelihood we’ll have something in place for him in the next few
weeks.

Sherdog.com: What about the rumored woman’s
tournament?

Rebney: One thing we’re trying to get our arms wrapped
around for season two is if we can get enough world-class
competitors together for a woman’s tournament.

Sherdog.com: What about including the light
heavyweight and heavyweight divisions?

Rebney: Season three is already scheduled for the summer.
There won’t be any kind of delay between seasons. And with that,
we’re going to need to fill in the heavyweights and the 205-pound
guys. We might even go to 135 pounds.

We want to improve on the quality of every competitor in every
single weight class. Every single guy in the class, you’ll say, “He
could win it.”